Take the overwhelm out of MCAS prep for your struggling readers and writers.
Preparing for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) is challenging, but for students with IEPs or those who struggle with executive function, multi-step ELA prompts can feel impossible.
This 2-lesson resource uses the opening paragraphs of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to teach students how to identify and analyze contrast. By breaking the process down into bite-sized, structured steps, students learn how to pull evidence, organize their thoughts, and build a complete essay response without the cognitive overload.
Standard test prep often assumes students already know how to organize their thoughts. This resource explicitly bridges that gap:
Chunked Text Analysis: We tackle Paragraphs 1-3 individually. Students answer targeted multiple-choice and context-clue questions before they ever look at an essay prompt.
Fill-in-the-Blank Scaffolding: Short constructed responses use guided, fill-in-the-blank templates to help students practice academic syntax (e.g., "Even though the author introduces Mr. Utterson as a strict man who [blank]...").
Visual Graphic Organizers: Students map out the contrasts between Mr. Utterson, Mr. Enfield, and the London street setting in a clean, side-by-side table before they begin drafting.
2 Chunked Reading & Analysis Worksheets: Covering the opening of the novel, featuring standardized-test-style Part A/Part B questions.
Structured Graphic Organizer: To track evidence and explanations for the final prompt.
Comprehensive Teacher Answer Keys: Buy back your planning period. This resource includes fully completed answer keys for all text analysis questions, a filled-out graphic organizer, and a complete model exemplar essay.
Middle School / Early High School Special Education Pull-out Groups
Co-taught Inclusion ELA Classrooms
MCAS Intervention Blocks
Step-by-step sub plans
Stop modifying mainstream test prep. Give your students the structured, evidence-based learning path they need to succeed on the MCAS.
Start with the The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. SE standards for Student Edition and TE is for Teacher Edition.
Dive into this lesson after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to build connections between central idea and finding text evidence. SE stands for Student Edition and TE stands for Teacher Edition.